A useful but rambling assemblage of advice about the myriad types of wealth.
A guide reflects on the nature of life’s various material and spiritual treasures.
In his book, Smith acknowledges the significance of material prosperity. In fact, he offers all manner of counsel regarding the navigation of readers’ practical affairs, from careers to home ownership. He even pauses to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of receiving a considerable inheritance, and advocates for the importance of teenagers gaining some “financial literacy.” But the accumulation of money and property is only one aspect of wealth, a recognition that often arises later in life: “Only through practical experiences in middle-age or older is it recognized that money is not the most significant characteristic of wealth. In fact, they were most wealthy when they were in a stable situation with loving parents and childhood friends and pets—a stage of life that once passed can never be recaptured.” He sensibly reflects on several types of nonmaterial wealth, including the spiritual kind comprised of beliefs that, if nothing else, can be “psychologically comforting.” In addition, he discusses the significance of an “intangible cultural inheritance” passed on by an individual’s elders. This brief mediation—the book is under 90 pages—has the warm timbre of an avuncular lesson delivered to younger readers in need of advice while approaching the threshold of adulthood. The author’s tone is confidently knowing as well as gently solicitous. In addition, Smith offers many tidbits of thoughtful and helpful counsel. But the book meanders widely across an uneven terrain of topics—the author discusses the costs of keeping a pet, home security, and the process of buying a computer. In the spirit of comprehensiveness, he attempts to trace “life events from birth to death.” As a result, readers will get the impression that Smith is thinking out loud, leaping somewhat randomly from one lily pad of discussion to another, down a roiling stream of consciousness. This peripatetic style eventually proves a bit exasperating, and some readers may not make it to the book’s finish line.
A useful but rambling assemblage of advice about the myriad types of wealth.Pub Date: June 22, 2023
ISBN: 979-8889636090
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Pageturner, Press and Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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